Electromechanical Switches Could Reduce Future Computers' Cooling Needs

Earthquake Retrofit writes "Science Daily is reporting that researchers at Case Western Reserve University have taken the first step to building a computer capable of operating in extreme heat. Te-Hao Lee, Swarup Bhunia and Mehran Mehregany have made electromechanical switches — building blocks of circuits — that can take twice the heat that would render electronic transistors useless. 'The group used electron beam lithography and sulfur hexafluoride gas to etch the switches, just a few hundred nanometers in size, out of silicon carbide. The result is a switch that has no discernable leakage and no loss of power in testing at 500 degrees Celsius. A pair of switches were used to make an inverter, which was able to switch on and off 500,000 times per second, performing computation each cycle. The switches, however, began to break down after 2 billion cycles and in a manner the researchers do not yet fully understand. ... Whether they can reach the point of competing with faster transistors for office and home and even supercomputing, remains to be seen. The researchers point out that with the ability to handle much higher heat, the need for costly and space-consuming cooling systems would be eliminated.'"

Comments

These would be great for high-end test equipment

[smellsofbikes]

I do test circuit hardware design and we use standard relays all over the board, for switching bits of circuitry into and out of contact with an integrated circuit we're testing. We use mechanical relays because of the same reasons they say: zero leakage current when they're open, and extremely low resistance when they're closed, which semiconductor switches just can't equal. The problem is the lifetime of the relays, so we have to socket them all (which, when you're building a board with 500 relays on it, is a significant time and money sink) and replace them pretty often on high-running parts (some of our parts have been in high-volume production for 20 years.) Plus they're big and take up the majority of the board. Having a device that's tiny and can last a billion cycles would be completely awesome.